In His Footsteps: St. Patrick of Ireland is one of the world's most popular saints. Apostle of Ireland, born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, in Scotland, in the year 387; died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, 17 March, 461. Along with St. Nicholas and St. Valentine, the secular world shares our love of these saints.
A gerund is a form of a verb used as a noun, whereas a participle is a form of verb used as an adjective or as a verb in conjunction with an auxiliary verb. In English, the present participle has the same form as the gerund, and the difference is in how they are used. When used with an auxiliary verb (is walking), it serves as a verb and is the present participle. When used as an adjective (a walking contradiction) it is also a participle.
Sometimes a word or phrase appears to be a verb when, in fact, itâs something else. Itâs important to look at the function that a word or phrase plays in a sentence before determining its part of speech. A gerund is a verb form that ends in -ing. A gerund phrase includes the gerund, plus any modifiers and complements. Gerunds and gerund phrases always function as nouns. They can act as subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, predicate nominatives, or objects of a preposition in a sentence. To determine whether a word or phrase is functioning as a gerund versus a present participle, try replacing it with the word something. If something works in the sentence, then the word or phrase is a gerund. Climbing is not as easy as it looks. (Climbing is the gerund. It acts as a subject in the sentence.)